


Machination

by hellkitty



Category: RoboCop - All Media Types
Genre: Case Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 04:44:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1253350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oh lordy, lordy, lordy. Today in 'Things I Will Regret' news: Slapped myself up for a casestory because I am a masochist. But hey hey, hold up because there's gonna be like...plot. ACTUAL PLOT, and police stuff like homicide investigations (keenly crafted from all my years watching Law and Order) and ridiculous cameos, and probably gory stuff and some shooting and, and...and...really bad neuroscience. Yep. Can promise that, too.  </p>
<p>It's been, oh god, AGES since I wrote a mystery last, so this'll probably only update about once a week.  Post-canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Dr Dennett Norton had the kind of stamina that could endure cyberneural surgeries that often lasted up to eighteen hours. The kind of stamina he did not have was this kind, the one that pushed one to a hasty half-run, where he felt every ounce of his middle-aged softness stealing his breath as he made his way through the cubicles of the Detroit PD’s working floor.

He’d gotten a call that they needed him here as soon as possible, and of course, he had only one thought: that something had happened to Alex, that he’d collapsed or malfunctioned. It had been going too well, he thought, too smoothly, almost tempting fate, and the nearly deserted cubicles didn’t help allay his concerns. Something was happening in the briefing room and he wasn’t sure he wanted to see behind the door.

But if Alex needed him—

He stopped in the doorway, hit by that sudden wave of self-consciousness, as twenty or so pairs of eyes (Alex would have a precise number and mood reading on each) swiveled toward him. And Alex’s were among them: he was standing, in the back looking…absolutely normal, absolutely fine. He even managed a half-smile at Dennett, and a nod.

“Ah. Dr Norton.” A voice from his left, the podium at the front of the room. It was Captain Rhee, Dean’s replacement, a stocky Korean from the South Side. Dennett had only spoken to him once, over the phone, about Alex, but he recognized the voice. “We’re sorry to call you here like this but we needed an expert opinion and Detective Murphy suggested you as the natural choice.”

“Expert on?” He blinked, because all he could see on the projection behind Rhee was a crime scene photo, the blood-flecked body of what looked like a young woman. At least the body was that of a young woman: the face, the head, were a pulpy mass of red and black, little bits of white which Norton recognized, queasily, as teeth, glinting through under a jagged bone that must have been her jaw. 

“One moment.” Rhee picked up the selector, swiping through the images. “The vic—victim" as if Dennett needed a translation "—is a Jane Doe at the moment. You could possibly see that her face has been, well, rendered useless for identification purposes.” Meaning, Dennett figured, the damage to her mouth.

“Normally,” Rhee said, “for cases like this, because of, well, budgetary constraints, the Medical Examiner only searches as far as the cause of death. Which in this case was no great difficulty.” He indicated an image, showing more of the damage, and some bruising to a shoulder—a missed strike with whatever the killer had used, causing a swelling hematoma under the skin. “However, he also noticed,” and Rhee swiped again, and the picture resolved to a medical grade high res image of the top of the brain, “this.”

The violence of the other images had unsettled Dennett, so it was almost a relief—as strange as it might sound—to see the naked brain. He saw those almost every day, they were familiar, readable, almost comfortable.

He stepped closer. ‘This’ was the small crimp of a neurochip lodged between the lobes of her prefrontal cortex.

“We were hoping you would tell us what it is. The ME seemed to think it was something called an AD chip.”

Dennett shook his head, peering at the image, his hands pushing his sportcoat back, to find their way to his pockets. He could ignore the room of people behind him, and he felt himself relax, the heat from his dash over here dissipating. “It’s not. It’s too new. AD chips went out years ago after the first lawsuits started rolling in. This is…maybe a year old, just by the model.” Chips got smaller every year, more refined, more precise. “And if it were….” He realized that he would have to explain.

He turned toward the audience. “You might remember the Youth Riot Epidemic five, six years ago?” A few of the older officers nodded. “Social scientists looked for causes in the outside world: poverty, education, single parent households. In neuroscience, we were looking in the brain. And since the development of high technology, in the last thirty years, there’s been a direct impact on the brain of technology. Cell phones, in particular, were shown to retard the myelinization of the prefrontal cortex.”

Blank looks. Well. Fair enough. Dennett pointed to the front of the brain on the image, where the chip was. “Myelin is a fatty coating over the neurons. Like a sort of setting gel for them. Delayed myelinization of this area,” he tapped the very front of the brain, “is shown to have a direct affect on things like delayed gratification and impulse control. In other words….”

“More prone to violence.” Lewis, Alex’s old partner. Dennett nodded. At least someone was following.

“AD chips were a highly experimental protocol, basically a way to try to get cybersurgery to make up for nature’s lack, to act as a stop to impulse control.” A bitter thought at how resistant he’d been back then to them, declaring at one conference that it was playing God. He didn’t even try to meet Alex’s gaze right now. He’d done more than play God with Alex’s mind.

“So what happened?”

“Only the rich, and a few funded studies in juvenile detention facilities, got them. And they worked, until the natural myelinization process began. And then the patients found their focus turning to obsessions, and even simple gratifications such as eating were put off until, well…too late.” So many of Dennett’s colleagues who had mocked him had quietly disappeared offshore with their millions as the first lawsuits hit. “After that, the program was discontinued.” And hushed up, he figured, looking at the faces that seemed to only be hearing this for the first time. It hadn’t been an OmniCorp venture: Raymond Sellars simply hadn’t seen the ‘wow’ factor in creating what he called Beaver Cleavers. For once, OmniCorp had dodged a PR bullet.

He turned back to the image, nodding. “But I can see where the ME might think it was. It’s almost in the right place. Female, right?” He turned to Rhee for corroboration.

“So it’s some sort of impulse control device.” Alex, from the back of the room.

“It appears to be, yes. And if…” he squinted, turning to Rhee. “Do we have an image of the chip itself, removed?”

Rhee shook his head.

“Can we get one? Better yet, get the chip?” He felt something stir in him, a sort of excitement, that he could help solve a crime. Maybe. From a safe and sanitized distance, at least.  

“I can call the ME and ask if the body’s still there.”

“Please.” He paused, approaching the image, until it was blown up too big, pixilated, “Because I suspect we’ll find a copper monofilament, here, along the corpus callosum. A relay, in a sense.”

“Relay leading where?”

Dennett shrugged, eloquently. “That’s what I’d like to find out.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uncomfortable questions get asked. 
> 
> And yes, of course, we make up for the lack of Alex in the last chapter.
> 
> Chapter one was, of course, the cliche of 'there must be a body'. Now, we make things complicated for our protagonists.

The brakes screeched, the rear tire lifting off the ground, weight throwing forward in the intensity of the stop. Alex’s HUD scanned the woman in front of him, as two others, one man, one woman, came to flank her, each holding up devices—merely cellphones, no threat. ‘Amanda Meehan’ popped up, a little identifier pointing at the woman in the black coat, white scarf frothing at the neckline, pillowing a pale face and a sleek blonde bob. No prior arrests, only few low-level motor vehicle citations.  

“Alex Murphy,” she said, pointing at him.

He sat up, head tilting. It still moved with that strange, mechanical sliding grace, uncanny to human eyes. “Can I assist you, citizen?”

She looked at the others. “You’re getting this? Are you? Great. This is perfect.” She turned back to Alex, speaking slowly, far more loudly than necessary. “Do you know who I am?”

“Amanda Meehan, no prior arrests, one moving violation, dismissed.” Flat recitation off his main access screen.

“What else?”

What did she want? Was he wrong? “Your address is 325 Barclay Court. You have—had a husband. Divorce processed two years ago. You have no dependent children.”

“And?”

He stopped, puzzled.

“What’s my phone number?”

He looked it up in a cross-reference directory, reciting the ten digit string. Were his details wrong? She had no affiliation with OmniCorp, no previous association with him…that he could find. Was that it? Had he forgotten her, the way he’d looked at Clara and not recognized her?

“I think that’s enough,” the male companion said. Meehan nodded, and Alex did a quick rescan of her body. Still no weapon, still no threat. Why did he feel uneasy?

“Alex,” she said, and her tone shifted, as she stepped near enough to brush the wheelarch of his motorcycle. “Let me ask you something. Do you consider yourself an abomination?”

The question was so jarring, especially in her still smooth tone of voice, that reminded him, in a way of Raymond Sellars’s, that he felt something like a spear of cold in his belly. Abomination?

“No,” he said, but the word was thin, and he could see the timbre register in his own audial as ‘nervous: possible deception’.

“No? Well, then, what are you?”

What. Not who. “Detective Alex James Murphy, Detroit Police.”

“Named in his honor, at any rate.” She tilted her head, a little theatrically. “Alex Murphy: where do you sleep?”

“I don’t see the releva—“

“Here, right? Back there, in some lab?” She tilted to one side, peering around him back down the ramp he’d ridden up. “If you were really Alex Murphy, really a man, you’d sleep at home, with your wife. Your son.”

His wife. His son. Clara. David. His eyes blinked, a sharp, inhuman gesture. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he heard himself say, at a distance. “I have casework.” He revved the engine, twisting the front wheel adeptly, dodging around her and her companions, toward the open street, but it felt for all the world like he was running away.

***

It wasn’t like Alex to be late, but it was only five minutes past the end of his assigned duty day. Dennett wasn’t too concerned. Yet. He pulled up his email, taking a few minutes to relax. He needed it, anyway. His day, after his early visit to the briefing room, had been full of the kind of work he didn’t care for, had never been good at: public face, spokesperson.

The Omni Foundation had taken a blow to the chin with Sellars’s death, Norton’s own testimony about the RoboCop program. He’d had to do it, and he’d felt…cleaner, afterwards, somehow, that he’d sounded an alarm that his work was dangerous, and how easily it could be twisted to wrong uses.

As he had done with Alex. It was more than duty that kept him here, though; he did owe Alex so much, a debt he’d never repay.

But there were always those who saw results: a mother with a son back from Iran who desperately wanted him to walk again; a female cellist who’d lost her arm in a car accident and had remortgaged her house before seeing him, so desperate she was for even the chance to play again. There were always those who could pay, would pay, and the Foundation was, if slowly, if staggeringly, getting on its feet again. Doing the work Dennett had started it for: miracles.

He’d say yes to anyone, but Liz Kline represented the Omni interests, and so the meetings were always…far more stressful than they should be. He remembered the days under Sellars where he could take a charity case, knowing the ‘good PR’ that would come out of it was worth Sellars’s tax write off.

When those are the good old days…., he thought, wryly.

A few new potential clients, which he forwarded to Liz for scheduling. He just—he’d look at them later. He’d had enough, today, of playing god with people’s hopes.

A personal one: a fellow neurosurgeon he knew from conferences. The last time he’d seen her had been the one in Aruba, two, three years ago?

               _Dennett,_

_I am so sorry for not having written sooner. It’s so easy to fall out of touch these days. And then I heard about your OmniCorp testimony and I figured you maybe needed the reminder you have friends. And this friend has a son in Detroit right now, studying at Wayne State. Neurosurgery. I guess the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. I’ll be visiting Caleb next week: I’d love if we could at least meet up for lunch?_

_Mina._

Oh. It would be a good thing, he decided. Someone to talk shop with, without needing to sound slick or explaining down. Maybe he could show her the lab. He felt a sudden bubble of pride that seemed to fizz away some of the exhaustion that had gathered around him, looking around the lab. He was still proud of this, at least. And Alex, who he could see coming down the corridor. In his way, he was proud of Alex, how much he’d salvaged, how strong Alex had been to survive. He’d taken pride—perhaps too much—in showing him off, in managing him.

And here he came, trusting Dennett, still.

“I’m sorry I’m late, Dr Norton.” He could operate with maximal efficiency: sadly, the same couldn’t be said of DPD’s booking process.

Dennett laid the tablet aside. “You’re not late, Alex.”

“I am. I am six minutes and forty-two seconds late.” It felt to Alex like disrespect: late for an appointment with the person who made him what he was.

“Well, it doesn’t matter.” He never could shake Alex of some of these precisions. “You’re here now.”

“I don’t want to waste your time.”

“Alex,” he sighed. “You don’t waste my time. I was catching up on things anyway.”

Alex’s HUD noted that Norton looked tired, but not unhappy. Maybe good ‘things’. “Things. Did you hear from Captain Rhee?”

“Not yet. But these things take time.” He stood up, gesturing for Alex to move to the cradle. “Any noted deficiencies?”

“No. Everything’s nominal.”

Dennett nodded, and started his own scan as Alex shifted his weight into the cradle, the magnetic clamps engaging to take his weight. Dennett trusted the scans, but there was no replacing a trained surgeon’s eyes or hands. Especially on his own work. “And how are you feeling?” Always a risky question, for so many reasons.

Alex said nothing for a moment. The confrontation—was that what it had been?—with Meehan had haunted him all day. Abomination. Was he? He remembered the panic and horror he’d felt at seeing himself, all that was left of him. But this was, well, maybe not a ‘miracle’, but something close: he could walk and move and do his job. Everything. Except, like she’d said, sleep at home with his wife.

A long moment, a little too long. Dennett sat back, looking up at Alex’s face, expectantly. “Something wrong?”

A smooth shake of the head. “No. Nothing wrong.” But his face was discontented, and Alex knew it. “I’ve been thinking about Clara. And David.”

“Well,” Dennett said, with that faint smile he had. It looked a little haggard, as though it had gotten a bit too much use recently. “That’s only natural.”

Natural.   Did that word even apply to him anymore?

Norton waited a beat, then bent back over his work, a small screwdrill loosening one of the plates over Alex’s thigh. It was a thin feint, so Alex didn’t feel like he was under observation. “You can call them, you know.” Alex knew that, of course. That wasn't the point; that wasn't the problem. 

“I know.” The discontent was stronger in his voice: Dennett picked up on it and he didn’t have any of Alex’s complicated protocols.

Dennett looked up, pushing his glasses up his nose. “You could visit them.” Such an obvious answer, that Alex should know, too. Should. And the fact he didn't meant there was something in the way, something not named OmniCorp, this time. 

“Dr Norton.” Alex’s mouth worked, nervously. “I don’t feel—I don’t belong there.”

“They’re your family, Alex.”

Simple logic, and part of Alex’s brain agreed. He could pull up his own file and see it. “It’s not that easy. I mean. How can I even fit in there? I can’t do…anything I used to do with them. Everything’s changed.” He lifted his left hand: could he put his son to bed with this hand? Could he dance with Clara with these arms? Hell, he couldn’t even eat.

Dennett sat back, giving a long exhalation of air that was almost a sigh. He didn’t like talking about his own life. It felt too raw, still. But then again, who else deserved the trust, if not Alex?

“Alex. When my wife was in chemo, everything changed. We couldn’t go anywhere, not even the mall, without exhausting her. She couldn’t bake, which she loved to do. I couldn’t—I couldn’t even hold her, without worrying about bruising.” And as a doctor, he’d known more about the cancer treatment’s side effects than most. It had still been devastating.

“I’m trying to say,” because he knew how bad he was with words like this, “Things changed, but she didn’t. She was still my wife. We…made do. We made new routines, new habits.” They’d started taking long drives, just to get out, watching movies, Dennett carefully pausing them whenever she faded into sleep. “What mattered wasn’t what we did but that, well, that it was a ‘we’ doing it.”

Norton’s mouth worked, pressing down against tears that still threatened to escape after all that time.

“We,” Alex said, after a long moment. He gave a slow, almost silent nod. “Dr Norton—“

“We can do your blood cleaning protocols now. Or in the morning.” He didn’t want to force Alex to ask. He’d stood between Alex and his family in the past too much, because he’d had to, or thought he’d had to. He wouldn’t do it again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aw, hell, let's keep that roll we're on of complicating our characters' lives.

He rolled the motorcycle to a smooth stop on the curb by the driveway. His driveway, his house. His home. Home. Not the lab.

The house seemed to glow in the night, gold lights pouring from the windows, glittering from the beveled glass of the front door. It looked like…heaven, really, warm and intimate and safe against the semi-dark of the suburban street.

The bike’s centerstand engaged, and he swung his leg off the bike, moving up the driveway. It still jarred, still unsettled, that the house looked exactly the same, and he was so different, that the only marks of anything happening here, the place where the life of Alex Murphy ended to rebegin as someone, something else, in China, were small divots in the driveway, unreadable to most eyes.

But this was his home, this was the life he’d wanted, the life he’d built, and inside were the people he’d stayed alive for. It was Clara he thought of, and David, all those long nights in China when he wanted to give up, when he wanted to sink in despair and horror at what he had been turned into: Clara’s warm smile, soft mouth, David’s laugh. Small things, perhaps, to pin a life onto, but they’d meant…everything to him then.

Still did, and it was the thought of seeing those again that drove him up to the stoop, chiming the doorbell. He felt his breath quicken, and he gave a nervous smile. Shit, he felt like a teenager again, picking up a pretty girl for a date, giddy and nervous and eager and hoping desperately he didn’t screw up.

It felt almost…good to feel nervous. He could still remember when he couldn’t feel anything.

A silhouette from the kitchen, crossing to the door that resolved through the wavy decorative glass into Clara’s hair, Clara’s shape, as she opened the door.

And words failed him.

Like a teenager.

“Alex?” She looked puzzled.

“…hi.” The word left him in a rush, a whoosh of air, as though she’d punched him in the solar plexus.

“Is something wrong?”

He blinked, a little of the nervous giddiness shifting ground to something else. “No. I just…I missed you.” I still miss you, standing right here, feeling all the difference and distance between them. “Can I come in?”

She glanced behind her, back toward the kitchen, as though thinking. “Yes. I mean, of course. It’s your home, Alex.” And when she turned her face back to him, it wore the smile he’d ached for.

He stepped in, his footsteps heavy on the hardwood floor. It felt so different from the glossy tile of Norton’s lab, or the nubby bumps of the department’s industrial carpet. “How are you doing?” The words felt stiff and formal. This was his wife. He shouldn’t feel so tense around her, like she was a stranger. He was the stranger, if anyone was, and he was going to do his damnedest to change that.

“Good. We’re good. We—David watches the evening news now, just to see you.”

“Really?” It was both flattering and a sad reminder that he should have done this sooner. He followed her toward the kitchen and as long as he didn’t look down, as long as he tuned out the sound of his own movements, he could almost pretend—almost—that it was a normal day, he was just home from a long day at work.

“He does.” She turned, looking at him over her shoulder. “I just…I wish you would have called first.”

He half-hesitated, but his movements didn’t show it, compensating for his hesitation faultlessly. Called first? Like a stranger. Like he needed to give her warning. “I. I will. Next time.” A meek surrender. What the hell else could he do? Put his foot down, insist he could intrude? They were relearning things. ‘We’, as Norton had said. There was going to be an adjustment. He’d give her space.

And then he was in the doorway of the kitchen, and froze, seeing the other woman sitting at the counter. This was what she’d meant.

“Susan. This is Alex. My husband.”

He didn’t need Norton’s fancy emotion scanning protocols to tell that the air in the room thickened, that the woman sitting on the stool, glass of wine hovering near her mouth, was looking at him like he was some sort of freak. Monstrosity.

He shook the thought from his head, extending his hand. “Susan. It’s nice to meet you.” His voice sounded flat and formal, and he tracked her eyes, her hand as she reached, her mouth a thin, almost queasy smile. He dropped his hand: she wasn't going to take it. In his own house.  He turned to Clara. “Is David in his room?” He could at least go see his son.

“Yes. But.”

He stopped, half turned, the gyros sliding him back. “But.”

“Nothing,” Clara said, stepping back. “He’s got a guest.”

Easy to put the pieces together: Susan’s son. He could see it on Susan’s face, the flare of worry and concern if Alex walked in on them, huge, loud, terrifying.

He didn’t fit in here. He didn’t even fit, physically, chrome and steel in a house made of wood and soft fabrics. He wasn’t sure he’d trust the stool Susan was perched on, the one he’d sat at, shoveling breakfast in his mouth every morning for years, would hold under his weight. He was out of place. He didn’t belong.

But David watched the news to see him.

But maybe that was the distance he needed, too. Maybe Alex was the only one who wanted to change things, maybe he was the only one unsatisfied.

How had he thought that would work, anyway? How did he ever think it would work?

Stupid. Stupid and Dr Norton was an optimistic fool who had limited social skills on the best of days. Alex could list a dozen times, easily, where Norton had stammered around reporters, fumbled around donors, misreading almost every social cue. His turn began again, this time adding another ninety-degrees to its silky glide, to take him to the front hallway.   He could still feel Susan’s eyes on him, along the silver and black lines on his back, on the OmniCorp logo mid-thorax, marking him as a thing, a product. Not a man, not a husband, not a father.

“Alex?” Clara, stepping after him. “You could see David. Or maybe…tomorrow?”

Tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow. He shook his head, hand finding the door knob. Part of him wanted David to hear his voice, come running; why hadn’t he? But another part wanted to just slink off, in retreat, the only thing that could cow the terrifying RoboCop. 

He flicked on his IR, the function’s autofocus indicating the two red shapes, silhouettes, in David’s room, by the door, listening. Listening but not coming out. It told him all he needed to know, more than he needed to know. It made China seem like a lie. 

“I will call next time,” he said, simply, trying to hide how his voice broke, feeling a sudden, tumultuous need to be back on his bike, slicing through the darkness, white and red and blue lights flashing, carving arcs in the night. He wouldn’t go back to DPD, not just yet. He needed to ride until the restless serpent of despair inside him had exhausted itself.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More cast, more problems. ^_^

“And what culinary delicacy is this?” Liz Kline settled down next to Tom Pope on the small table. It was after business hours, but both of them had been in OmniCorp too long for them to think that actually meant anything. It just meant the public time was over. The wheels of the business juggernaut needed to keep turning, round the clock. Especially in the wake of Sellars’s death.

“Froot Loops,” Pope said, finishing pouring the almond milk into the bowl. He had a newsfeed on the big screen, local news, blather about the weather, the latest campaign, the usual formula of evening news fare.

“Froot Loops,” she repeated, peering into his bowl. “They _are_ loops, I suppose.” Fruit, not so much. Probably why the spelling.

“More than that,” Pope said, lifting up his spoon.”They’re a marketing marvel.”

“Really. Because children are impossible to sell to.” The sarcasm was thick, but not unfriendly. They kept their edges by whetting them against each other.

“Harder than you’d think,” Pope said. “But look. See, all these different colors? They all taste the same. Exactly the same. The only thing that’s different is the food dye.”

“GENIUS,” she said, moving to pour a coffee. It was just so…Tom, to not only be eating kiddie cereal for dinner, but to be nerding out about it. And only Tom would mix Froot Loops and almond milk.

“It is, really. And the best part is, even when it came out that they were all the same, sales didn’t dip. They actually rose. And why?” He grinned, pausing to chew and swallow, waiting for her elegant shrug of surrender. “Because people didn’t believe the marketing. Who’s going to believe it when the manufacturer tells you they’re a fraud? They just presumed it was a ploy. They were determined to prove it wrong, to insist that they tasted different.” He gave a sage nod.

“It’s like a Zen koan of marketing,” she said, laughing. God knew it felt good to laugh.

“Damn strai—aw shit.” His eyes stayed on the screen, his spoon frozen, one drop of almond milk falling back into his bowl.

“What? Oh.” Because Liz recognized the woman on the screen. And she had a habit of not remembering the easy ones. “Thought we’d finally paid her off.”

“Mandy Meehan,” Pope said, shaking his head. “Jesus, and just when we were getting the Foundation back on its feet again.” He reached for the volume control.

It was a package: Pope could tell that right away. A package cut and edited and sent to the local stations. And if this one, how many more? Damn. He hated being blindsided.

Meehan was speaking, interior shot of some house, cozy but modest furnishings. For effect, Pope figured. “I-it’s creepy. I mean, I can understand why they’d want it like that when it faces criminals. But me?”

The package cut to an outside shot, a little weaker resolution, obviously cellphone cams. And there she was, standing off against…Alex Murphy. What she’d been calling ‘it’ apparently. The cameras showed, almost like a montage, as he recited, in a series of shots, direct, reverse angle, reactions to Mandy’s face, her name, her marital status, her citations, her phone number.

“The PR nightmare that keeps on giving,” Kline said, folding her arms over her chest.

“Both of them,” Pope said. “But we’ve had worse to cover up for.”

“Sure, the guy who killed our boss. Just another delightful day at OmniCorp.” Norton had turned into a bulldog overnight, and his public testimony showed that he had the balls to back up his threats of going public if they didn’t continue the funding Sellars had promised. Promised to the program to make the guy who killed him.

Kline couldn’t help but think Sellars would have found the irony hilarious.

Back to the interior, and Meehan was holding a crumpled tissue, like she’d just blotted her eyes, though her makeup told otherwise. Amateur, Pope snorted.

“One thing’s for sure,” Pope said. “She’s got a hell of a video editor.” Because this was slick, polished. Not as good as he could do, of course, but far better than the amateur she’d been.

Liz shushed him, but there was no need. He wanted—needed—to hear this as much as she did.

“What does this mean for all of us? First the NSA, now this, with no human oversight. A machine having access to all of our lives. Every time we’re outside our house. And who knows where it stops, really? Can it activate the camera in your tablet?” She looked directly into the camera, blue eyes piercing and intense.

It was a prepared speech, and the acting was a little off, but effective enough.

Another shot, outside, with Murphy. “Do you consider yourself an abomination?” A moment, a pause, and then a moving shot, jerky and shaky, as if Murphy had simply cut her short in response, nearly running her over as he rode away.

Pope clicked the mute button. Whatever palaver the local news head was going to give was inconsequential. They could always be managed: you just put teleprompters in front of them and they’d say whatever you wanted them to, no matter if it contradicted what they said just last night. Perfectly conscienceless, and in their way, more robot than Alex Murphy.

“If she wanted money, she’d have come to us with lawyers again,” Kline said, pondering, her nails tapping at her opposite wrist as though she had some keypad there, before getting up and moving toward the cabinet.

“She wants to ruin us.” Pope spoke around a mouthful of colored cereal. He didn’t sound down—the opposite. This was a challenge, a direct gauntlet thrown in his direction. He was ready to fight back. “Or thinks she does. Mr Sellars said that the average consumer doesn’t know what he wants till you show it to him.”

Kline reached across the table, hooking the box of Froot Loops, dumping them in a bowl, letting her weight drop onto the bench. Meehan probably wanted to ruin them, going through Alex. And attacking Alex, right now, was attacking Kline’s own job. Not going to happen. “And so that’s where we’ll start.”

***

Alex had the codes to the lab in his programming: the doors whooshed open at his approach. He still felt restless, but it had taken a dangerous edge, where if he did anything it would be…bad for all involved, a kind of frustration that thought it wanted to vent itself punching a wall or screaming. Dangerous. He didn't used to be like this, feel like this, trapped and frustrated, even with the whole city, the whole night spread before him.

So he’d headed back to the lab, to force himself to wrestle with stillness. He wanted to fight, there was an enemy enough inside his own head. He couldn’t power himself down, but right now, wrestling with these demons was about all he could manage. He didn’t trust himself facing a criminal right now. Facing anyone right now.

He pulled up the local broadcast, as the lights faded to a dim glow around him. It felt awkward in that normal-no longer normal, unfamiliar familiarity that always skimmed the edges of his life now. Remembering what used to be, only to realize that it was forever a 'used to be'.  Maybe, he thought, he could catch the sports part, hear how teams he used to care about were doing, at least, how the pre-season was shaping up. It would be good to hear some progress, something going well. Maybe he could find some way back to David with it. 

He settled back into the cradle, letting the autoclamps grab him, take his weight, trying to sigh the strain out of his body as the screen resolved.

\--to Amanda Meehan’s face, the pale, high cheekbones, the sharp eyes, asking, in a perfectly framed shot, “Do you consider yourself an abomination?” And then his bike, zipping away.

He closed his eyes, though he could still feel the scene, from memory, all the silt he’d thought settled churning up again.

_David watches the news just to see you._


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What, no! More complications! More characters! Stuff! Things! Needless exclamation points! !!! And to think I was worried that I wouldn't reach the 10K minimum wordcount.

Jack gave an awkward sort of smile, looking down at the covered cup. “I’d’ve brought you one, but….”

“It’s fine,” Alex said, though part of him would have punched someone for a cup of Starbucks right now. He remembered—in the past, in his other life—how he and Jack had passed long stakeouts, ordering ever more elaborate and bizarre coffee combinations, and then daring the other to drink it. Jack had named it Operation: Barista Breakdown. He knew Jack remembered, too, and it was another difference, another marker of who he wasn’t anymore. “I’m glad you came.”

“Hey, man, no problem.” He shrugged. “Trust me, could use the company right now myself.” Jack leaned back against one of the cars in the motorpool: Alex hadn’t quite felt comfortable with meeting Jack in the lab. Yet. Especially not after yesterday. He just wanted to feel…normal.

“Bad news?”

“New partner,” Jack said, masking his expression—or trying to, because not much escaped Alex’s emotional assessment protocols—in a sip of coffee.

Alex blinked, accessing the DCPD roster for new additions. “Lewis, Anne Nancy. Transfer from Vice.” A picture of a slim woman, bright green eyes, copper hair. She didn’t look anything like a cop, he thought. Probably why she’d been in Vice.

“Yeah, ain’t that the shit.” Jack grinned. “Lewis and Lewis. Least Rhee won’t have to learn a new name.”

Alex didn’t know how he felt. For all his ability to read others, it was like he’d traded the ability to read himself. His emotions were always strange to him, a little distant, the way pain is when you’re on high morphine, cloudy and indistinct. But he felt the pressure to say something. Jack had been his ally, his friend, for as long as they’d been partners. Pretty much since that first day, which had somehow ended up in armwrestling and beer. “It’ll be…good,” he said, uncertainly. “You should have a partner. Back up.”

“Back up my black ass,” Jack said. “Your black ass, too, while we’re at it. We’re still partners, far as I’m concerned.”

The words stirred something around Alex’s heart, shaking loose some of the cloudiness. “Always,” he said. He hadn’t forgotten: Jack at OmniCorp, rigged out in SWAT gear, risking his life to cover Alex’s movement. When he’d needed him, even when Alex hadn’t thought he’d needed anyone, Jack had been there.

A beep from Jack’s shirt pocket. “That’ll be her,” he said, fishing his phone out. He tilted his head up the ramp to the civilian vehicle lot. “Want to come meet her?”

Not really. Alex felt a little thread of something like jealousy stitch through him, but on the other hand, he still had at least an hour before Norton was due in, and spending it staring at the morning news…. “Let’s go.” Not a yes, not a no.

Jack took another swallow of his coffee, levering himself off the patrol car. Alex followed, trying to think of something to say. He riffled through her files. “She’s won two commendations,” he said, helpfully.

“Dean had a damn chest full of medals,” Jack said, sourly. “Don’t mean a thing.” Then he relented, aware he’d been a little too sharp. “All that matters to me is if she can handle herself under pressure.”

Alex rustled up a grin from somewhere, his heavy steps sounding up the ramp beside his former partner. “Think I can help you find out.”

***

Anne Lewis, it turned out, could handle herself pretty well, at least under the pressure of a cyborg almost twice her height opening the door of her battered Dodge Neon for her. She gave a startled blink, then her freckled face split into a grin. “Hey, really rolling out the red carpet for the new guy, huh?”

“How the hell you ever make it in Vice,” Jack said. “You look like you’re a damn extra in a Disney Channel show.”

She laughed. “That’d be part of it. Guys in the circles I hung with figured if you had a pair of these,” she pointed at her chest, “you got nothing up here.” She winked. “I promise I won’t wear any of my old UC clothes.”

Despite the wink, Alex could sense a nervousness in her, that it was bluster, a front, a little too cocky, like she was trying to fill some image of what she thought the main floor detectives wanted.

The only thing worse than your own social awkwardness was someone else’s; worse when you can’t rescue them from themselves. And Alex could tell from the eyeroll Jack shot at him as Lewis hefted up her box of belongings and headed for the stairs that Jack wasn’t liking what he was seeing.

“New case,” he said, clumsily. Anything to try and smooth this over, anything to try and distract himself from his own feelings, seeing himself replaced.

Jack grunted. “The Jane Doe from last night. Still working on IDing her. Your boy get anywhere with all that…freaky head chip shit?”

Alex didn’t want to point out that that ‘freaky head chip shit’ was probably related to the stuff that kept him moving, kept him alive. “I’ll ask him when he arrives.”

Jack nodded. “Leads other than ID, we’ve got the dumpsite.”

Alex could access the file but he let Lewis talk. It felt like before, at least enough like it to feel good. And Lewis had always done his best thinking talking things out with his partner. They both had.

“Got a possible lead on the car. It was a rolling dump. CC’s didn’t get a plate shot, but we’ve got a make, model and probably color.” Jack shrugged. “Busywork now, but once we have an ID on the vic, we can start making connections.”

“I could make some calls,” Anne cut in, elbowing open the fire door to the department’s floor. “If she’s a street girl, someone I know’s gotta know her.”

Jack’s mouth twitched, like she’d intruded on a private conversation, when really, Alex thought, it was a conversation Jack should be having with her. “We’re not sure.”

“When we have a picture that could be used for identification,” Alex interrupted, “that is a viable strategy.”

She looked up at him, dropping the box on her desk. “That bad, huh? Facial injury?”

Alex glanced at the computer screen on her desk, already booted up, and put up the projection from yesterday’s briefing. He saw her green eyes flick to the screen, her face skin blanching: her vitals read distress, but she forced a queasy version of a cocky smile. “Yeah, okay, fair enough.” She ducked her head down to her box of stuff, looking away from the screen, taking out her things: a desk organizer, a framed picture of a man and child that had Alex drop his gaze to her left hand. No wedding ring. Then again, Vice. She did UC, and a ring-band would have been a giveaway.

She caught his glance, and gave a rueful shrug, but didn’t answer, and his displays read stress. Something there she didn’t want to talk about.

He could relate.

Alex felt Jack’s eyes bounce from him to Anne and back. Taking notes, paying attention…to both of them. Jack had an eye for details, an ability to read people that Alex had always envied. He wondered what Jack was seeing now. There was a time he’d know he could pull Jack aside, later, and ask. But this was another distance that had grown between his former life and now, and Detective Anne Lewis fit into that gap, even if imperfectly.

“The rest of the file on there?”

“I’ll get you up to speed,” Jack said. He didn’t sound happy, and Alex wondered if this would be easier on Jack, getting a new partner, if Alex was dead, gone, not standing right there between them like an enormous ghost demanding attention.

Alex took a step back. It was impossible to retreat in silence when every movement of your joints released pneumatic whispers. “Dr Norton’s in,” he said, lamely, knowing that his own protocols would announce him as lying, and hoping Jack’s read was less precise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Delicious cameos: of course Anne Lewis is a reference to...you know, if I have to explain this one...? She's a redhead here, just because yo, gingers represent! 
> 
> Also a cameo I know you won't get: Anne drives a 1998 Dodge Neon coupe. Which is...The Black Beastie, my old grad-school-days car. Yes, I MarySue my car *GASP*. Beastie had a cameo previously [ here ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046055) in a deliberate badfic full of meta and Matt Damon jokes and is the product of mainlining all three Bourne movies in one day. Which I do not recommend.


	6. Chapter 6

The elevator doors had just closed when Alex’s comm chimed at him. A phone call: not Dr Norton. Norton had a direct channel. He took the half-second to call up the number. “Clara.”

“Alex.” She seemed off-balance by his abrupt start. No greeting, no ‘hello’. “I wanted to talk. About last night.”

“I have already conceded that I will call next time.” He didn’t know what to do. Everything he’d thought of to try to get some handle on himself, his life, try to renegotiate the rules, went wrong.

“Alex.” She sounded frustrated, a voice stress analysis popping the information on his HUD. What had he done wrong now? He didn’t feel frustrated…more like exhausted, tired of being wrong. “I’m sorry. About that. It wasn’t what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“It’s David, Alex. He doesn’t have any friends, other than William—Susan’s son.”

“He has plenty of friends.” The whole hockey team, for one. That little girl—what was her name?—that he’d insisted they hunt down a My Little Pony valentine for last year. He had friends.

“No. Alex. Things have, well, things have changed for him.”

“Because of me.” A hollow feeling, too familiar.

A sigh. “Yes. I’m sorry.” She was. He could hear it. “It’s hard for all of us, Alex. But he’s a child. He…he doesn’t have any coping skills.”

Alex was about to retort that his ‘coping skills’ were really Dennett Norton’s neurochemical manipulation, but he knew that would be unhelpful. And it didn’t change the point: David was suffering. And he hadn’t noticed. “And he and William….”

“Are friends, yes.” A soft laugh. “To be honest, I have nothing in common with Susan, not really. But it’s for David.”

The confession helped, though Alex couldn’t really articulate why: a statement that the woman with the judging brown eyes wasn’t a projection of Clara’s own thoughts, that Clara hadn’t been talking about him.

Now that he thought it, it felt greasy, grimy, the kind of thought a husband shouldn’t have of his wife. Talking behind his back. She would never. “I understand.” He hesitated. “I’m glad he has a friend.” Sometimes it felt like Alex had none, not anymore, not with the distance between he and Clara echoed in the space between he and Jack. Even Norton was…complicated.

“It’s a start. And I’m sorry. Last night—it was just bad timing. If you—you could come by tonight? Or any night this week. I’ll make sure.” He could hear her reaching in her voice, trying to make it right. He wanted it right, too, wanted to at least take a step toward it, have the night he’d thought he would have last night: maybe watching TV, maybe putting David to bed, maybe just talking. But that all seemed like some hopeful dream right now, a fantasy daydream you make up to warm yourself up against a cold reality. He wanted to meet her halfway, to say yes, tonight, right now if you want.

But the words didn’t come. The elevator toned, the doors opening to the lower level, by Norton’s lab. “I-I have to go, Clara.” He cut the connection, feeling a wriggle of something unpleasant in his throat, something he was sure wouldn’t show up on any of Norton’s scans, his systems feeling hot with confusion.

***

Norton was just coming in the lab as Alex resettled himself on the cradle, letting the magnalocks take his weight. He remembered when it used to feel like a trap, force immobility. Now, today, it felt almost like a hug, something taking some of the burden and weight from him. Watching Norton reminded him of Mr Rogers, in a way, watching this morning ritual of Norton hanging up his tweedy sportcoat in favor of his white, crisp labcoat, smoothing the soft knitted tie, the kind he favored and must have had in at least fifty different colors, before turning to the lab and Alex.

Alex felt a pang of envy, because it was clear that Norton loved what he did, loved his job, the idea of helping people, watching what he did succeed, give people the power to walk and move and hold their children again. And he thought of the night Norton must have had, a little late because of Alex, but home to a wife who was glad to see him, maybe kept dinner warm for him, the way Clara used to.

“Good morning, Alex.” The greeting was formulaic, the doctor already pulling up last night’s data. He’d see the time Alex returned, know he hadn’t stayed at home. Alex saw the instant he realized it cross the doctor’s face. He mastered his expression, though, looking up too blandly over the blueglow edge of his clearscreen tablet. “Shall we run those protocols, then?”

Alex nodded, pressing his head back against the cradle’s inputs, feeling them engage. The moment felt awkward between them, and he struggled for a thing to say that wasn’t about Clara, or last night, or Jack or Anne Lewis. “Did you hear from the ME?” Neutral ground, or the closest he could get to it.  

“I did,” Norton said, bending his head over the screen, queuing up the protocol steps. “I’m going to see the body later. It’s a little different from my usual line of work.” He gave a quiet laugh, looking up. “I suppose you’re more used to seeing the dead.”

“I am.” Statement of fact. Even before, even Alex Murphy, cop and husband and father, had seen his share of bodies. Made more than a few of them himself. It was curious to see Norton, not exactly flustered by the idea, but less at ease than he usually was. It made sense: Dennett saw himself as a healer, a fixer, and there was nothing to heal in the dead.

Norton seemed to sense the tension, and began speaking, as he tapped the commands to begin the blood cleansing and nutrition protocols. “The AD chips were part of a bigger program, a sweeping reform.” One shoulder lifted, wry. “It was supposed to end crime as well: prisoners rewired to do good deeds, or at least to feel some internal pain when they acted out. Simple, rudimentary, really. Pavlovian training.”

“What happened?” Alex was dully curious, mostly just eager for anything to talk about than last night, though he knew Norton probably wanted to know.

“Well,” Norton kept his gaze on the clearscreen, watching the readouts. “People aren’t that simple, the brain isn’t an I/O channel. Our interactions aren’t a spreadsheet. Take, for example, well, a police officer. We’re told that killing or hurting someone is wrong, it’s a crime. But it isn’t, always. Self-defense, or some use of force to—what do you call it? ‘Pacify’ the criminal.” He looked up for Alex’s nod.

“Threat assessment.”

“More than that, though. Before you had that, before any of this, you had, what?”

“Instinct, and training,” Alex said.

Norton nodded. “And, well, all right.” He resettled himself on his stool. “Say a child, say your son’s age, points a gun at you. What do you do?”

“Not shoot.” But he could hear the uncertainty in his own voice, as the programming in his mind announced it would be a threat, no matter what the age of the hand holding the gun.

Norton nodded: he’d made his point. “A computer, a robot, one of Sellars’s drones, would shoot.” Sellars had said as much before Congress. “You’d…have a struggle. A human struggle.”

Alex nodded, taking more comfort in the word ‘human’ than he probably should have. “But someone with one of these chips?”

“Everything was black and white, like a computer. And some,” he leaned in, “some, it didn’t work on at all. Their brains just weren’t…wired that way. Especially in the prisoner groups.”

Alex gave another nod: he knew the type, had seen them before. People who just seemed incapable of not breaking the law, recidivists who would even tell you as you were arresting them for the fourth, fifth, sixth time that they didn’t know why they kept doing it. But then…. “But me?”

Norton looked up, then back to the screen, almost shy. “We have a more…sophisticated understanding of neuromechanics than neuropsych,” he said. “But, well, I admit, I’m not sure we could replicate you.”

In Norton’s voice it was a compliment—Alex was special, Alex was unique, almost a miracle. In Alex’s mind, he wasn’t quite so sure. He wasn’t even sure how much of his mind was really his own mind, for that matter. But it was clear: Norton was proud of him, of who he was, more than what he was. And it wasn’t what he’d wanted, and it was probably childish, but he still felt the gaping distance between he and Clara, he and Jack. His own son was ashamed of him or afraid of him, for Christ’s sake, hiding him from his new friend, or his new friend from him. So it was small and it was childish, but he clung to the fact that at least someone was proud of him just as he was.


End file.
